Advances in communications technologies have had a significant impact on our lives. From simple telephony to video conferencing, communication technologies have allowed us to more easily transfer data from one source to another regardless of geographic limitations. The Internet hails as the one of the most recent significant advances that has had a substantial influence on our daily routines. Evidence of this impact can be seen in the insatiable appetites for e-mail communications and Internet services, such as, the World Wide Web (WWW), instant messaging, online discussion boards (chat rooms), etc. The impact of the Internet and other similar communications networks can be seen both at home and in the workplace. Public and private sectors, alike, have recognized the strength of these communication technologies and have deployed comprehensive information technology plans to exploit them. These information technology plans allow employees to engage in telecommuting such that data resources may be leveraged, in real time, to employees independent of geographic limitation. As a result, both the enterprise and its employees realize significant benefits from this ability.
The communication industry has been quick to respond to the growing needs of consumers to have access to data. A slew of products and services have been designed developed, and deployed in response to these needs. From broadband data services to wireless telephony, communication technology developers and service providers (e.g. telecommunication companies such as regional Bells) have deployed and continue to deploy communications products and services that operate on their communications networks. When deployed, these services allow for the real-time data transmission and delivery. For example, communication service providers support the mobile delivery and transmission of electronic mail to hand-held mobile computing devices such that participating users can access their electronic mail remotely. Similarly, real-time browsing of Internet Web content, delivery of secure corporate data is also supported by current communications networks. As such, communications service providers are constantly striving to exploit the capacity and abilities of their communications networks.
Currently communications network services focus on the delivery and storage of content. Typically, data is stored on a computer server connected to one or more communication networks supported and maintained by the communications network service providers. The computer server executes one or more computing applications that allow participating users to access a variety of data stored either on the computer server or on one or more cooperating data stores. Generally, with current communication network services, participating users have little or no control over where the data may be stored. That is, the computer server computing applications perform most of the data management functions and for the most part act to “push” the data from the computer server to the participating users' computing device (e.g. home personal computer, mobile telephone, mobile personal digital assistant, etc.). Furthermore, current remote access systems and methods do not provide confirmation to participating users of the delivery and distribution of desired data. That is, participating users most often are left to assume that the communication network with which they are interacting has delivered the desired data in accordance with the participating users' intentions.
However, these practices fall short of providing participating users with the ability to remotely access data such that the participating users have data management and storage control (e.g. control over the directory structure), as well as, receive confirmation that desired data has been delivered and/or distributed correctly. Without the ability to remotely have data management control and without confirmation of proper data delivery, participating users are often left with the arduous tasks of ferreting out desired data from pre-defined directory structures and manually confirming that desired data has been delivered to intended parties. Moreover, in the context of remotely accessing data from a corporate network, often participating users require the ability to create new directory data structures to store new data, modified data, or simply to move data from one storage location to another. Current communications networks systems do not support such capabilities leaving participating users wanting.
From the forgoing it is appreciated that there exists a need for comprehensive system and methods that allow the remote access and transmission of data such that users have remote control data storage management features (e.g. control over directory structures).